Shaman Sniper
by Skandranon
Summary: Based on a philosophy I happen to believe. There's more to Irvine than you think. Rated for graphic depiction, lotsa blood an' carnage. Each chapter can be viewed as a stand alone. Extremely OOC.
1. Language Barrier

Language Barrier

by Skandranon email: 

A Final Fantasy VIII fanfic

Not yaoi, not romance. Not that good, either, but wth. Introspectivishnessity.

Warnings: Rated R for blood. Lots and lots of blood. Kinda icky. And some cussing. I don't like to censor myself. Also, AU, sorta.

Summary: There's more to Irvine than you think. Based on a new age philosophy that I happen to believe. Status: Complete. Has absolutely nothing to do with my other fanfics.

By the time we reached Irvine, his heart had stopped.

It wasn't pretty. A gunner up close is still pretty powerful, but not as powerful as a melee fighter. And even the best gunner is not as powerful up close as ten bladers, especially when he's surrounded.

He'd been hacked, slashed, diced, and pretty much assaulted with blades in any way you can be assaulted with blades. He'd lost almost all of his blood, and most of his vital organs were dissected. The worrying part, really, was the head injury. A gash three inches into the skull. Wounds can be mended. Blood can be replaced. The brain is a delicate thing. If we cured the injury, it would fuse the brain in places it shouldn't be fused, resulting in brain damage. If we left it alone until we got him to a hospital, the blood would seep into areas it shouldn't be, and most likely the injury would never fully heal, resulting in brain damage. It's a damn annoying situation.

Five curagas, three phoenix downs, and the heart started pumping again. Quistis kept pumping Curas into him as we carried him to the Ragnarok, and Zell ran ahead to fetch the emergency kit. I swear that, for one brief moment as we hauled him to the surface, I saw his eyes flutter open. He looked at me, his lips moved a milimeter, and then he was out again.

He died eighteen times on the way to Balamb. His lungs were nothing more than so much bloody mess. It was only a ten minute flight, but everytime we brought him back to the living, his heart would beat a few moments, a minute at most, and then stop. By the time we got him to the infirmary, the number had reached twenty-two.

It's a good thing we got him there then, since we only had twenty one phoenix downs on hand. I horded them like golden treasures, and had expected them to last me over a year. It almost dissapointed me to see them poured into him one after the other, to a mere moment's effect.

The next time I saw him was twelve hours later, when Kadowaki finally yielded and let other doctors take their turn operating. Somehow, he looked more gruesome then than when we found him. Stitching ran all over him, more IVs were jammed into him than I could count, a great terrible machine was doing his breathing. There was more blood in the room than room. I only saw him for a brief second, while the door swung as Kadowaki traded places with a less exhausted medic. Quistis was still going and snarled at anyone who said the word "rest" to her.

I saw him again when I woke up. Damn Kadowaki and her sedatives. Irvine was the only patient, and I had been given a spare cot.

It was nine hours later, and they had finally got him stable. Quistis was dead to the world, curled up in a metal chair. Kadowaki had been given the day off. Zell brought me coffee, Selphie brought me news. He would live.

He was in a coma, and frankly it was the best place he could be right now. He was on every type of life support available, with a tube down his throat and other tubes in every orifice the cursed doctors could find. His chest rose and fell in an exact pattern punctuated by beeps. His shooting arm was doomed to be near useless, and so was his left eye. If he ever walked again, it would be with a limp.

For the rest of my life, I wondered what it was that made his attackers so angry.

Once he regained consciousness and his ability to walk on his own, he fled to Galbadia, claiming a need to "be on my own and deal with this". We understood, and helped him bribe the doctors into releasing him.

He would have to go through life with one kidney, and one and a half lungs. His intestines had been a difficult jigsaw to put together. He was missing a finger.

Imagine my surprise a month later when he waltzed into the Garden healthier than I was.

He never gave an explanation, just shrugging and leaving it at "I got better". His sight was so close to 20/20, it wasn't measurable as anything but. His shooting arm was stronger than the other one. He could run mile laps and not feel a thing. I could kill to learn the truth, but he would simply shrug, smile that damned unreadable smile, and wander off to get something to drink.

Most of the gang wrote it off as "one of those things that only happen to us", and in a week it was forgotten. Selphie would sometimes watch Irvine with an eerily scrutinous look in her eyes, especially when he used a gun, but she never commented. In fact, she was the first to write it off as "7.3 on the weird shit-o-meter, moving on".

Half a year later, as capable as he ever had been, a building fell on top of him.

Three stories of concrete rubble, one Irvine Kinneas, over two hundred bone fractures. No lasting effects.

Three months later, he and Selphie were driving their spiffy new wheeltoy, and they were hit by a drunk driver. T-bone on Selphie's side. She was rendered a vegetable for life. Irvine stayed by her bed for two weeks, refusing to leave for more than bathroom breaks. We had to bring him food to keep him alive. For hours on end, he would just hold her hand, gazing into space, eyebrows furrowed as if concentrating. Never cried.

On the fifteenth day, she woke up.

As soon as she was safely stable, I grabbed Irvine and hauled him out for a "celebratory drink". I bought him four bottles of fine Galbadian whiskey before asking him how the hell he did it.

He smiled and shrugged, and for a moment I expected him to just slur "She go' be''er". But his shrug made him wobble, and his smile was a bit wider than unreadable. He was an excellent drinker, but Galbadian whiskey is an excellent drink.

"I's all a ma''er oknowin' yerself."

I sipped my coke. I had stopped drinking after my second beer. He had been on his third bottle by then, and hadn't noticed. "What do you mean, 'knowing yourself'?"

He sniffed, and wiggled his nose thoughtfully. "Ye know yerself, ye know th' world, an' ye can' change i'."

He babbled on like this for a while, then lost the topic for a while and mused on the glory of breasts, and then, two hours later, he started making a little more sense.

"I's an ol' Galba'ian trick."

"Never seen a Galbadian do it before you."

"Nah, no' all Galba'ianz. Jus' few, in th' wes'ern plains. On'y knew one oth'r preson couldoit."

"How do you do it?"

Irvine tried to steeple his fingers and made a hopeless mess of them. "Well, 'ow dyo move yer arm?"

Trusting Irvine was going somewhere with this and would finish before passing out, I answered. "Your brain tells the muscles to move, and the impulse runs through your body to the arm, and it moves."

Irvine nodded sagely, then blinked many times to clear his dizziness. "'Ow does yer body 'eal?"

"Your subconscious mind tells the body to repair the damage, and the body draws from energy stores and incoming energy sources to heal."

That won him a sloppy smile. "An' how dyo breathe?"

I frowned. "Your subconscious tells your lungs to expand and contract, and they do."

"Bu' what if you wan' to breathe, right now, before yer sposed to?"

"I…you tell your lungs to breathe."

Irvine nodded as if the answers to the universe had just been answered.

I had to admit I was lost. "You lost me."

"You can tell yer lungs ta breathe wi' yer conshus, an' they will. You blink wi'out thinkin', but ya can also blink wit' thinkin'. Wheneva ya wan' to."

"So?"

"So," he paused for a long period to steady himself, hands frozen in a halted gesture. "So, so, you can 'eal by tellin' yerself to too. I's jus', mos' people don'."

"What?"

"Body's got a lang'age all its own. Mos' people don' both'r ta learn it, 's'all. Ya can tell yerself ta do near'y anythin', not jus' move."

"Healing by simply telling your body to do so?" I snorted. "Sounds like some new age spiritual nonsense."

Irvine shrugged and chugged his whiskey. "If'n ya say so."

I pondered this for a long while, but thankfully not too long, otherwise the question that occurred to me would have been said to someone far too drunk to answer it. "But, how did you heal Selphie?"

Irvine grinned and slid a little farther down onto the bar. "Ya'd b'sprised wat ya can say ta somewun ifya know de righ' wordz."

And he promptly passed out.


	2. REM

Snippets of a Shaman Sniper – Part 2

Sleepwalking

by Skandranon

Fandom – Final Fantasy VIII

Warnings – semi morbid, kinda depressing, I think a cussword or two, very AU.

Summary – Squall dreams. Based on a shamanistic theory of spirit walking, but expanded to fit a fantasy world.

The grayness swirled and howled, and he clawed at his ears to drown it out.

Nothingness as far as the mind could see, the air stale and unmoving, but it hummed and screamed at him, with the voices of all the soldiers whose lives he had taken.

Rivers of blood, flowing and gurgling, with little waterfalls where the ground was uneven. The redness of a thousand innocents, flowing through the grey desert and pouring over the edge in muddy streams.

Rinoa's face, over and over, bloody tears dripping down her cheek. Seifer's face, with cold twisted smirk and cold haunted eyes. Matron's face, smug as ice exploded in her chest. Ellone's little childhood face, with the feverish hating eyes of Ultimecia.

He was chained to the desert floor, cold steel around cold skin, so heavy, weighing down his wrists and shoulders. And the dead mocked him, and pleaded with him, and screamed at him.

He begged them to stop, but it never stopped, it never stopped. And Seifer was standing over him, plunging his gunblade into his heart, then he was gone and Ultimecia was clawing his face with her chiseled nails, then she was Rinoa for an instant before being replaced with Laguna, so tall towering over him, patting him on the head and telling him to be nice to the other kids at the orphanage, goodbye.

Timber burned. The forest owls howled as their skin turned to ash. Deling shattered with an earthquake. Balamb fell into the sea. The Garden crashed in a rending scream of metal and flame.

And his gunblade was laying on the ground before him. He should pick it up, he really should, but his hands were bound, and no matter how he stretched, it was too far away, though it was only inches from his fingertips. And as he watched, the years passed over it, and the edge dulled, the metal rusted, and it slowly fell apart until it was nothing but wreckage, laying in front of a tombstone that said nothing more than S. L.

He called out, but the people around him didn't hear, didn't see him, didn't care. He begged, notice me, but he was alone in a crowd of faces of those who had said to him time and time before, we care, we'll be there for you. And they mocked him and scorned him but they didn't see him, and their eyes looked through him and saw only his terrible crimes and the blood

and Irvine's face replaced them, indigo eyes filled with worry, and he was crouched beside him, breaking the chain links with a touch.

Squall sobbed into Irvine's bare chest, body paint smudging onto his cheeks. "Make it stop, make it stop."

Warm arms came around him, holding him to the stillness, and the howling was only a faint sound outside. Soft words were murmured in his ear, meaningless except in their comfort. You're safe now, they said, without saying anything at all. The feather in Irvine's soft hair tickled his ear.

The world turned onwards without them, and they held each other in their motionless bubble until the blood river ran dry, and the tombstone cracked and eroded away.

He wailed his pain into the chest for years, until the tears wouldn't come anymore, and he collapsed. The support stayed, calloused fingertips massaging the tenseness from his shoulders.

When the anguish was only a distant memory, he glanced past the shoulder. The greyness didn't seem so bad now. Like a cloudy day, dull but meaningless.

"Better?"

He hiccupped, and clutched at the arms, his need to be held fading but still present.

"You're dreaming, Squall. Try to relax."

He frowned, and noticed for the first time how purple Irvine's eyes were. Purple, like a full moon over a snowy tundra when you're running between the pine trees.

"This is a dream. You're asleep. We're in your head."

But it felt so real. The pain, the blood, the body paint… it felt so real. "Are you real?"

Irvine smirked, and his smile was amusement and safety with a wildness beneath, the grin of a carnivore when it's sated and happy and basking in the sun. "Sort of."

"Don't go."

The sun faded a little, and concern flitted across the moonlit eyes like a black cloud. "I… can't stay for long. I felt I needed to pop in to stop your nightmare, but the pull won't let me hang around all night."

"I don't understand." He clung to the chest as if it were reality.

"I know you don't. I'm sorta… spirit walking right now. Etheral jaunt, what have you. I'd explain it, but you won't get it, and you'll just forget when you wake up," he tilted his head and listened to a distant clock that throbbed like a heartbeat, "which is pretty soon, actually."

"Don't go."

The grip loosened, and regret made the lips droop a bit, but the promise of safety was constant. "You won't have another nightmare tonight. Just take some regular R.E.M. time and dream of sexy chicks until your clock goes off."

He stood, bare feet scraping the dry ground. Squall whimpered at the loss.

"Oh, forgot to tell you. Quistis said for you to meet her in the training center at seven. Evaluation thing."

And he was alone in the emptiness, the wind murmuring hidden words, the air humming around him and there was a blood…

…red tulip in front of him, growing stubbornly out of the cracks in the ground. He touched the soft petals, the dew dripping onto his fingers, cool and safe and sparkling with sunlight.

But the air kept humming at him, grinding against his ear. Go away, he growled. I'm busy.

But it kept humming, and humming, and beeping.

Beep beep beep beep beep whap.

Squall groaned, blinking the sand out of his eyes. Fumbling his way to the bathroom, his dreams were hazy by the time he got the shower going, foggy glimpses by the time the toothpaste hit the bristles, and by the time he headed down to grab a quick coffee before meeting up with Quistis for her damn evaluation thing, they were gone completely.

((Author's notes)) If you're wondering what the heck is up with some of the descriptions of Irvine, let me put it this way – we each have a subconscious view of what we look like, and in our dreams, we are whoever we want to be.


	3. Wild at Heart

Shaman Sniper Ch 3 – "Wild at Heart"

By – Skandranon

Summary – One practice of real world shaman is shapeshifting, where you behave like an animal to take on its spirit and strength. Adapt it to a fantasy world, and you get this.

When I hunt in the training center, I don't take any magics or Guardian Forces. Just my gunblade and some healing potions. T-rexaurs don't act as much of a challenge anymore, and grats are so pitiful I sometimes don't even bother to kill them.

So there I was, unjunctioned, no magic, only one elixer, and my left leg was aching a bit. And there was Irvine, in a similar predicament, but had just run out of ammo. We had decided that when he finished off the rounds, we would go to lunch. My stomach thoroughly agreed with this idea.

How a behemoth got into the Training Center, I have no idea.

It was between us and the way out, and it had definitely spotted us. There was no chance of us taking this thing down without GFs or backup, but the closest emergency radio was also on the other side of the beast.

My plan was for us to split up and hide in the trees, hope it would get bored and chase larger game. I whispered this to Irvine, not taking my eyes off the monster. It didn't look angry, threatened, or hungry, just curious. So maybe we wouldn't die just yet.

I didn't get a response. Irvine wasn't there anymore.

Thinking he'd made a run for it like I'd suggested, I bolted for the foliage, ignoring the pain in my leg as best I could.

I made it halfway before the behemoth decided I was good target practice.

I woke up to a splitting headache, a burning sensation in my shoulders, and a lack of feeling in my legs. Taking stock, I realized I was at the foot of a tree, partially hidden by a leafy bush.

My gunblade was wedged pretty deeply in the bark, probably from impact. My shoulder was dislocated, my leg broken, and my elixar smashed. Stupidest thing I ever heard of, putting valuable healing medicine in glass containers. But the behemoth was gone, and I couldn't hear it moving nearby. Something that big, if it moves, you hear it.

Later on, we figured it out. The Garden was parked in Esthar, which is territory for plenty of behemoths. And if one of them decided it wanted into the Training Center, then by Hyne it was coming into the Training Center, impact hull be damned.

Irvine was nowhere to be seen. I only hoped he'd gotten out of it better than I had.

Using the Revolver as a crutch, I stumbled through the center towards the way out. Any grat that dared to get in my way would be a meaty pulp by the time I finished. I was in a very grumpy mood.

Concussions will do that to you.

This was the point where I realized that if a behemoth could get into the center, then maybe smaller, but still dangerous creatures could get in too. Because as soon as I cleared the trees, I found myself standing next to a torama.

Make that five toramas.

Only the one closest had spotted me, but any moment now it would growl and alert the others, and in my condition, I was hardly even an annoyance. I held still, weapons clutched in a death grip, praying it would consider me not worth the effort.

Oddly enough, it did. It rose, padded over to the others, and starting barking orders. The toramas all climbed to their paws and charged… off into the forest directly away from me.

The last one, the one that had spotted me, paused behind the others and glanced back. It gazed at me for the longest second, then did what I had feared. It turned around and came back.

But it stopped ten feet short, lay down, and just…watched me. I stood there for maybe thirty minutes, holding a staring contest with this thing. It didn't show any intentions of wanting to eat me, but then again, it didn't show any intentions of leaving either.

Finally I tried moving, slowly shuffling at an angle to the torama, trying to get to a clearer escape route. Its eyes followed me, but it didn't respond.

I backed up, trying to feel with my feet where I was going, not daring to expose my back to the beast. It just might change it's mind.

Then I heard a very distinct hissing sound behind me. Oh Hyne, not a grat. Not now.

Before I could decide which enemy to face, the torama was up and bounding towards me, claws unsheathed, teeth bared. I shifted my weight off the Revolver and brought it to bear, ready to defend myself.

The torama neatly sidestepped me and tackled the grat.

It took me a moment to figure out what was happening. It had the thing's throat – or what counted as one – ripped out faster than the monster could respond.

But it didn't eat the grat. It sat down next to it, about ten feet away from me, and just watched me.

Now it was between me and my exit, and I knew its game. For some reason, it was playing cat and mouse with me. Emotional torture. Like hell if I was letting a dumb animal torture me.

"Now look here beast. You're between me and my way out. Anything that gets in my way is going to get cut down, and that includes you. So move!"

I swear, the thing _laughed _at me.

Side note, grats travel in packs. Two more were closing in, one on my left, one behind me. Grats are very stupid creatures that will attack anything, so they weren't frightened away by the torama.

Again the torama lunged towards me, snarling. I wasn't sure if it was going for the grat, but I wasn't taking any chances. I shifted my weight again and held my blade at the ready.

The torama did pass me by in favor of the local wildlife, but I gave in a nasty slash across it's left forepaw. It hissed at me something fierce, but kept after the grat. Once it took it down, it went after the other, completely ignoring the one creature that had given it damage.

Weirdest monster behavior I ever did see.

Well, no. I did see an Imp try to dance once.

The torama chased its prey into the bushes, and it didn't reemerge. After waiting a few minutes, I decided to take the opportunety and hobbled my way for the exit. I made it without anymore fuss, but I kept hearing the sound of dying grats in the bushes.

I called the infirmary, and Kadowaki came down to tend me. A large teem of SeeD came just after, to search the Training Center for Irvine.

It didn't take them long. He strolled up just as they arrived. He had dirt on his coat and sticks in his ponytail, but otherwised he looked fine. "You alright, Squall?"

"Peachy." Kadowaki had just informed me that I couldn't sleep for twenty four hours due to my concussion. I could feel my leg again. I didn't want to anymore. "You?"

He waved a hand vaguely in a gesture that was probably Galbadian for 'you know how it is.' But across the back of his hand was a huge gash, bleeding heavily.

"How'd you get that?"

He blinked, and flipped his hand over to check the damage. "Oh, just fighting what I came across. It's not as bad as it looks. A pretty clean cut." He accepted some gauze from the asst. nurse and started wrapping the wound.

"Fight any torama? The ones I came across were acting strange."

He chuckled. It almost sounded like a purr. "Can't say I did. Mostly fought grats. Rest well, Squall. I'll check on you later." And he strolled out, chucking his empty ammo rounds in the trash bin.


	4. Discord

"Discord"

By Skandranon

Summary – Irvine has some peculiar habits.

* * *

I'm not really sure why, but Irvine was blue.

He was strolling through the halls of Garden, as nonchalant as ever, whistling a jaunty tune. His gun was in its usual position, slung across one shoulder, polished until it gleamed. His hair in its usual place, groomed and preened to the point of near death, bangs curving about and the rest tucked neatly in a thick ponytail. The smug smile never left his lips as he tipped his hat to the girls he passed.

But aside from a thick coat of blue body paint, his hat was the only thing he was wearing.

This almost topped the chicken suit incident. Or the day he spent screaming about rabbits. Or the day he decided to speak backwards. Selphie loved it, and called me "Lauks" for weeks.

He's a perfectly sane person… most of the time. Any day other than these random days of nonsense, he's perfectly reasonable. Intelligent, generous, sociable, not easily provoked. Maybe a bit of a pervert, but that's to be expected of a Galbadian.

But every once in a while he goes completely nutters for the day and declares war against pancakes, or renames himself Lord Emperor of Dental Floss, or drives a pink girl's tricycle through the halls howling like a banshee.

Today, it was blue body paint and nothing else.

He noticed me and waved, and wandered over to the bench I occupied. I spent the short time before he arrived deciding whether I should mention it. On one hand, blue body paint. No clothing. Probably against the dress code. On the other hand, he could never be reasoned with on these days.

He sat down next to me in his usual slouched manner, which in this case exposed him for all the world to see. He was drawing a crowd and it was only 6 am. I had to say something.

"Why the blue paint?"

"Pink's not really my color."

I nodded, and turned back to my book. After awhile Irvine wandered off to get food, crowd trailing behind, a few with cameras. Later on Quistis caught on to him and gave him an earful. He listened penitently, then told her his green paint was in the wash. She gave up, slapped him with a detention, and stalked off.

And thus ended the day of the blue Irvine.

Two weeks later was the day of the tutu.

A week after that was the day of Anatadaephobia. Fear of ducks. He even bought a flock of ducks and had them shipped to Garden so he could be afraid of them.

Zell said he did it for attention. Selphie said it was because he normally was so self controlled, he needed these brief moments of craziness. Cid said it was an outlet for his troubled past. Ellone said it was a way to alter his perspective of the world, and that by acting like this, he broke the "normal" rules and allowed himself to think beyond them. Quistis said he did it to bug her. Kadowaki said he was possessed. I think she was joking.

But on the day of the peeps, it occurred to me that we had never actually asked him why he did it. We asked him "Why the snorkel equipment? Why the bedroom furniture on the Quad? Why the ending of every sentence with 'in accordance with the prophecy'?" And he always shrugged off our questions in his roundabout way, without actually providing any information.

A few weeks later, on the day of nursery rhyme karaoke in the Cafeteria, I caught him between songs and asked. "Why do you do this?"

"I'd already paid the deposit on the equipment."

"No. This. Why do this?"

"I don't know all the lyrics to 'Wanna Fuck You Like an Animal."

"No. Not just that. All of it."

"I don't think my voice is loud enough to do without the mike, Squall."

"No, I meant why do you act this way?"

He peered at me intently, and for a moment there I thought I might get a straight answer.

"Well, I could throw in some stripping, but-"

Maybe not. "These days where you act bizarrely. Why do you do them?"

He smiled, shook his head, and launched into Three Blind Mice.

I started asking him every day of nonsense. He never really gave me an answer, even a roundabout one. He'd smile, shake his head, and go back to ice sculpturing. He'd pat me on the shoulder and dive back into the red-dyed swimming pool. Or once he even flicked my nose before returning to his duel with the inflatable horse.

Three days after the kama sutra hedges, I banged on the door to his room, determined to get even a halfway answer. Maybe if I asked on a non-crazy day, I could-

He opened the door and shoved a piece of paper into my hands. Then he shut the door and I heard the lock click.

I stood there for a while, flimsy scrap of notebook paper in my hands, not sure if I wanted to read it. If there was actually a logical answer for something like this… what else didn't I know about the universe? Finally, I unscrolled the little scrap and puzzled through the spastic handwriting.

"-this belief system that states that chaos is just important as order, dark as important as light, stupidity as important as intelligence. Without one the other is unbalanced and can become overused to the extreme, causing personality flaws. An example is the know-it-all who becomes so assured in their wisdom that they refuse to even consider that they might be wrong, or the do-gooder who, in their strive for purity, becomes unable to see the grey areas between the two absolutes. In this belief system, Humor is believed to be the highest virtue a person can achieve, and in fact is vital for moral and spiritual growth. It's terribly important to be able to laugh at all things, including and especially yourself and those ideals you hold dear. It's all well and good to be a learned, wise, moral person who understands both yourself and the world around you, and is in harmony with all things. But ever now and then, to be a fully well developed person, you just have to run naked through the mall screaming about fishsticks."

* * *

Author's Note – Based on an actual belief system. I leave you with this word of wisdom - fizzle. 


	5. Plushie

Shaman Sniper – Ch 5 "Plushie"

* * *

"Happy Birthday." Irvine handed him a handstitched doll, made in his likeness.

He turned it over, warily. "You got me a voodoo doll?"

"It's not a voodoo doll, it's a fetish."

"I'm not _that_ kinky."

"Not that kind of fetish. Wise ass. Here, I'll show you." Irvine took back the crude figurine, and pointed at what was supposed to be the gunblade scabbard. "See? It's a tube. You unscrew the top, write your heart's desire on a piece of paper, roll it up, and put it in the tube."

Squall quirked an eyebrow. "And you couldn't get me gun polish… why?"

Irvine snorted. "Yer welcome, ya bastard. Just thought I'd be unique. Don't knock it 'til ya try it. This thing's guaranteed to bring you the one thing you want most."

"Um, thanks, but I don't believe in stuff like that."

"Squall. You have a deity in your head. You cast magic on a daily basis. You've time traveled, possessed your father, and fought sorceresses."

"Your point?"

"My point is, don't knock it 'til ya try it."

Squall shrugged, and tossed it into the pile of previous gifts. It landed with a crack. "Jeez, what'd you do, put rocks in it?"

"Yes. Chakra stones. Makes it more powerful."

"Don't tell me you actually believe in this rubbish."

He found himself inches away from Irvine's nose as the cowboy stared down at him. It was an intense expression, but not of anger. He couldn't really place it.

"Just give it a try. You'll be surprised."

"Whatever."

* * *

It was a struggle to get the presents and rest of the cake through his bedroom door in one armload, but he was victorious. He tossed everything in a corner to deal with later. Right now he could use some unconsciousness. Six to eight hours of it.

Sleep, however, was short in coming. Too much soda, probably. He glared at the ceiling as if the thing had mortally wounded him. Darn Selphie for pushing that third piece of cake on him. He had enough sleepless nights as it is.

A thump was the pile of presents submitting to gravity and rearranging themselves into a more "downward" position. He glanced over at them, and wasn't surprised to see the button eyes of the 'plushie Squall' staring back at him. "Bloody cowboy had to be original," he growled. "Couldn't get me a tie."

_Heart's Desire, huh?_ Like most new age stuff, it was purposefully vague. _Like horoscopes._ But at least it was something to think about. He never could stand the weary blankness of mind that usually came with his insomnia.

_Well…Rinoa. But I've already got her. I'd like more time with her, but her work in Timber is important._

_…I always wanted a family. But Laguna just makes me uncomfortable. Right now, I only want to relate to him on a professional basis._

_…I like cheesecake. Heh, maybe the little dollie could bring me cheesecake. And then when I coincidentally get cheesecake, I'm supposed to throw my hands in the air and scream "It's a miracle", right? I hate new age stuff. It's so ridiculous._

Sighing, he dragged himself up, marched over to retrieve the doll, and returned to his bed. He hadn't taken a very good look at the thing. Maybe it could distract him.

It was a surprisingly good likeness, in a comical way. Blue buttons for eyes, in his exact shade, he thought, although it was difficult to tell in the poor lighting. A scar that looked like it was painted on with nail polish. Brown hair made of yarn, combed and glued into his "natural" hairstyle. A mini leather jacket of actual leather, and actual leather pants, boots, and gloves. There was even a tiny little metal necklace, though the pendant was just a silver ball. All his belts were there, with the large studded ones being made of leather strips with silver paint globs. The nose was nonexistent and the mouth was black yarn sewn in an X shape. If it had been a voodoo doll, that would've worried him a little, but on this plushie it just looked silly.

The scabbard 'tube' had been left unscrewed after Irvine demonstrated using it, hanging by a thread tied to the chibi's main 'belt'. He pulled out the blank piece of paper the cowboy had provided. It was one of those handmade, multicolored, recycled papers. And he swore it was scented.

Well, if he believed it was nonsense, what could it hurt to try it out? So long as no one ever found out. And if they did, he could say he was playing along for Irvine's benefit.

_What to write?_ He'd never been the one to fantasize about things he wanted, and his was finding the exercise difficult. He had Rinoa. He had family, now. He could go down to the store and buy cheesecake.

_If I could have anything in the world, anything at all, what would it be?_

Dammit. He couldn't think of anything.

Whatever. It was a stupid idea anyway. He grabbed a pen, and for kicks, scribbled down '300 foot tall living purple marshmallow chocobo'. _There, let's see THAT come true.

* * *

_

At five am, just as he was finally getting some sleep, his intercom buzzed the emergency signal. He leapt out of bed and over to it. "Leonhart."

"Squall, you're… not going to believe what just broke through the wall of the Training Center and ate a T-rexaur."

In the distance, he heard the loudest chirp that was ever chirped. It made the walls shake.

"Is it purple, fluffy, and made of marshmallow?"

"Yes, you've seen it already?"

"Have the SeeDs hold a bonfire and melt the blighter for s'mores. I'm calling in sick for the week."

He collapsed on the bed and put a pillow over his head.

The intercom buzzed again, with the regular signal. Groaning, he stumbled over to it again.

"Leonhart."

"Next time, buddy, ask for a puppy."

* * *

Author's Notes - I'm mixing the idea oftotem dolls and wish pendants, because I couldn't resist the temptation of a chibi Squall plushie. Who could? 


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